In praise of steel and silk and upright riding, tips on photography and a tower of pedal power.
Sue Archer writes:
Steel: the way forward Stephen Bach spotted this entry on the Raise the Hammer blog, based in Hamilton, Ontario. With an economy concentrated on steelworking and heavy industy, the city is somewhat at the mercy of fortunes of the automotive industry. Blogger Undustrial suggests that one solution could be to concentrate on producing materials for steel bicycle production - good for industry, bicycle builders and devotees of steel frames...
Silky smooth - or knobbly Silk is probably best known as a luxurious fabric or the constituent of spiders' webs, but one UK company is keen to see it incorporated into bicycle tyres. You can hear more about the idea, from Oxford Biomaterials in a video produced for the Innovate 10 competition. Incorporating a natural fibre would increase the sustainability and biodegradability of tyres, and silk is already used in some professional sport tyres.
Oxford Biomaterials currently specialise in medical applications of spider silk based technology, including wound closures. Silk can, of course, also be harvested from silkworm cocoons, with a single cocoon yielding up to 900m of fibre.
Upright citizens Wherever any number of Velovisionaries are gathered together, the subject of upright versus recumbent riding will probably crop up. But you can read a new slant on the upright question here on Bike Biz, from the designer of the Strida, Mark Saunders. It's not the recumbent question he's tackling, but the posture of most day-to-day upright bikes, and why there should be more emphasis on the "sit up and beg" style for most cycling, as opposed to the hunched over posture inspired by cycle racing.
What a picture! If you're into cycling, you've probably taken a few photos of bikes and cyclists over the years. In this video from the Guardian, sports photographer Tom Jenkins gives a few tips on getting the best action shots. And while there's some stuff about F-stops and ISO that doesn't apply to the average point and shoot camera, it's always good to remember to check out the best vantage points and angles and plan your shots.
A momument to the bike Jason Patient and Ilana Spector both wrote to tell us about the Cyclisk monument, seen here on Global Grind. The 60 foot high obelisk in Santa Rosa, California, was built by Mark Grieve and Ilana Spector out of unusable scrap bikes and funded by a local tax on big business developments, which is ringfenced for public art projects. You can read more about the sculpture, and some of the reactions to it in this Press Democrat article. And here's a video slideshow:
Rumours that the sculpture depicts the Velo Vision staff bike shed are unfounded...
Tom Jenkins, the photographer in the Guardian clip, has about �18,000 worth of camera equipment hanging off his body. I wonder if he takes a bodyguard on assignment with him?
From: Geoff on 2 October 2010
Nah! That's not the VV bike shed. It's Arch's.
She'll be along any minute to deny it but I have it on good authority that she wears 'em out like no business what wiv' 'er century rides.
From: erimo on 3 October 2010
Does anyone recognize the make/model of the bike in the x-ray picture accompanying Mark Sander's article?
Could be one of many similar bikes, but perhaps there are a few unique details that might give it away.
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